CfP - Speaking more broadly: Adapting anthropological concepts for a broader audience

Following up on our previous post, AAA in San Jose - Anthropological Concepts for Non-Anthropologists, Jennifer and I would like to take this opportunity to circulate a call for papers for our proposed AAA panel. We hope that this panel will be a launching pad for the new kind of anthropological handbook we have been imagining over the past year or so.

So, without further ado, here's our call! If you are interested in participating in this panel/ project, please get in touch with us by April 12th.

Call for Papers  |  Speaking more broadly: 

Adapting anthropological concepts for a broader audience

 

Panel for AAA 2018 Annual Meeting in San Jose, CA:

“Change in the Anthropological Imagination”

For questions or to submit an abstract for consideration, please email Jennifer Long (longjen@mcmaster.ca) and Rhiannon Mosher (rhmosher@yorku.ca) by April 12th.

In this panel, we seek to identify, contextualize and ‘translate’ anthropological concepts and constructs for a broader audience. This year's conference organizers ask anthropologists to write about holism, social change, resistance, resilience, and adaptation in the contemporary moment, and to recognize the importance of discussions about species, societies, reorganization, transformation and stasis. We invite anthropologists to take this challenge literally.

                                                                    

This CfP seeks authors who wish to break down the organizers' questions into their sum of parts in an effort to consider: how other disciplines, our applied experiences, and interdisciplinary partnerships inform our discussions. We want to know how we can tap anthropological experiences and perspectives to engage and educate a wider public? We seek to understand specifically how an anthropological vocabulary shapes and frames the field and our practices with our partners, interlocutors, and colleagues. Further, we want to better understand the ways in which anthropological understandings are understood, changed, and integrated into new contexts.

This proposed panel is a response to calls like Ryan Anderson's (2013) post (on the blog now known as Anthro{dendum}) to break the closed loop in which anthropologists often work. Anderson argues that anthropologists often end up speaking (just/ only) to one another about our work – all the while, this cacophony of anthropological insight remains locked behind closed doors. In our current sociopolitical context, and with more and more of our graduates working outside of the academy in interdisciplinary contexts, learning how to "get involved, to collaborate, to find ways to communicate and bring the ideas of anthropology to wider issues and conversations" (2013) should be the discipline's priority.

While the irony of calling for papers at the Annual Meeting on the topic of breaking open the closed loop of anthropological discussions is not lost on the panel organizers, we seek to create a resource which situates various anthropological concepts historically within our discipline, and then contextualizes these concepts in their new, renewed, and revised contexts. Importantly, each concept or term should be explained through a case study, an experience from the field, with researchers from different disciplines or through original research. It should be noted that this call is open to anthropologists in all four fields. The goal of this panel is to jump-start the draft for a text where various concepts are discussed using to be used by students, practicing and interdisciplinary colleagues.

Therefore, panel organizers seek papers that define, describe, and compare anthropological concepts used in practice, past experience, in industry (e.g. ethnography in user design or market research) or other disciplines (e.g. other social sciences, hard sciences or technology, engineering or math). Panelists should define the term in plain language, provide a brief history of its origin and use, then elucidate on the term using a case study from fieldwork, in conversation with non-anthropologists, and the workplace.

For questions or to submit an abstract for consideration, please email

Jennifer Long (longjen@mcmaster.ca) and Rhiannon Mosher (rhmosher@yorku.ca)

by April 12th.

AAA in San Jose - Anthropological Concepts for Non-Anthropologists

As blogger Rhiannon and I slog through the end of the semester, we're striving to post at least 1 blog post per week. Despite our want to continue our biweekly posts, life/administration/teaching/striking is getting in our way.

Instead, the bloggers of Anthro Everywhere! are cooking up an idea for a panel at the next AAA conference in San Jose. The theme this year is Change in the Anthropological Imagination: Resistance, Resilience, and Adaptation

One potential idea that we were throwing back and forth is the idea of writing an edited book about Anthropology (its concepts and uses) for non-Anthropologists.

Here is the idea in its nascent form - posed by blogger Long to partner-in-crime Mosher:

What do you think about writing a text that defined, described, or compared and contrasted anthropological concepts terms used in industry (e.g. ethnography in user design or market research) or other disciplines to our own? These terms could come from other social sciences, hard sciences or technology, engineering or maths. 

It would be an applied anthropology text but one that could also be used in interdisciplinary courses or by industry partners who want to understand the root of the terminology they're using. It would include examples and activities as well, which could be workplace or community-based experiences. 

This text could also serve as a guide and translation piece as to the usefulness and the pliability of anthropology - coincidentally anthropology's greatest secret and which "people" are taking way to long to figure out. I also thought it would help recent anthropology graduates articulate their skillset and knowledge to employers. 

We could write a book proposal for the AAAs timing this year (I'm going, are you?) while checking interest at the same time. 

Therefore, in a potential AAA panel proposal, we'd ask authors to identify a term, and present its application in either a work or community-based concept. Additional notes on the application of this term and its use within anthropology would also be required. 

As organizer and chair, Mosher and Long could present answers to such lingering questions as:

How would such a text be similar or different to other texts already out there, for example, Caroline B. Brettell's Anthropological Conversations: Talking Culture across Disciplines (2015).

Would such a text be more like a handbook or a textbook? Would it be an accessible text for anthropology majors/ grad students/ instructors? Would it be aimed at those who believe that most anthro grads are not going to be academics and need some guidance on how to speak to prospective employers about the value of an anthropological perspective?

Would the text be more useful if instead of presenting the info from a disciplinary perspective, it instead took a more career-stream oriented approach? More like a So what are you going to do with that? but anthro-specific approach? Or both?

Dear AnthroEverywhere! readers, what do you think?

Is there need for such a book?

Would such a text help/behoove the anthropology community? Its research participants? Its stakeholders? Its practitioners or students?

If you'd like to be a part of this panel or this book, please email us at anthrolens (at) gmail.com or tweet to us @anthrolens

New Advice for Grad Students page: Conferences

In October 2017, we published a series of posts on essential conferencing skills. We started with a post about how to write an effective abstract or organize a successful poster session, and from there we developed a full series of posts just in time for the AAA meetings.

Now, with the joint Canadian Anthropology Association (CASCA) and Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) annual meeting for 2018 on the horizon we have conferences on our minds again! (Check out this year's preliminary program here...)

While we do have a handy #conference tag for general navigation, we thought it might be helpful to group this series of tips on conferencing together on a dedicated page on the blog... and where better than in our Advice for Grad Students series?

Presenting our new Advice for Grad Students | Conferences page!

So, whether you are an old hand at conferences, a student-adviser, or a grad student new to the conference scene, we hope that you find these posts useful!  These posts offer tips on how to prepare for a conference, moderate and chair panels, as well as participate well in discussions and network during receptions and other conference events.

Happy conferencing!

Are you a grad student or prospective grad student wondering about job prospects, professional development strategies, writing tips, or wellness? If so, check out our pages on these topics for more advice and resources.

Ethnography & Case Study Research: Applying an ethnographic approach

Last week, I shared my recent experiences being hired as a research assistant at Ontario Centre for Workforce Innovation to conduct a case-study on a local example of innovation in workforce development. In this post, I want to continue that discussion, thinking a bit more about: what case study research is, how it intersects with ethnography, and why this matters for anthropologists.

What is Case Study Research? 

As anthropologists, we might be used to referencing case studies in our classroom. Isn't Malinowski's work among the Trobrianders an interesting case study of non-market exchange? How have Evans-Pritchard's study of the Azande or Gmelch's study of baseball magic become textbook cases for discussing systems of supposedly irrational belief? Or we might ask students to focus their examination of course issues on a specific case-study in a final essay...

This way of understanding a case-study echoes how Robert K. Yin understands the term and frames "Case Study Research" as a (qualitative and/or quantitative) methodological approach in his text Case Study Research: Design and Methods (5th edition).

Interestingly, Yin argues that a case-study approach is useful

in situations when (1) the main research questions are 'how' or 'why' questions;  (2) a researcher has little or no control over behavioral events; and (3) the focus of study is a contemporary (as opposed to entirely historical) phenomenon (Yin 2013, 3).

Case studies, writes Yin, have been popularly used by a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology. Whether conducted from the perspective of a psychologist, political scientist, social worker, nurse or community planner, Yin states that "the distinctive need for case study research arises out of the desire to understand complex social phenomena. In brief, a case study allows investigators to focus on a 'case' and retain a holistic and real-world perspective" (Yin 2013, 4).

How does Case Study research reference or intersect with Ethnography? 

So far, this understanding of when and why to apply a case study research approach seems remarkably similar to ethnographic research! And the parallels continue...

Yin frames the six sources of evidence used in case study research as documentation, archival records, interviews, direct observations, participant-observation, and physical artifacts (Yin 2013, 105-118). Hmmm....

In order to be a good case study researcher, Yin argues (2013, 73-79) that one must:

• Ask good questions - Essentially, Yin asks researchers to recognize the iterative nature of the research process and to constantly ask questions as the study develops during fieldwork, even as "substantive review" comes later. Yin even discusses grounded theory as an apt approach to case study research.
• Be a good "listener" - Yin advocates that we be active listeners and pay attention to all the social cues given during interactions with study participants. Importantly, Yin is advocating a certain amount of cultural relativism -- without using this term -- and openness to paying attention to what people do as well as what they say.
• Stay adaptive - "Few case studies will end exactly as planned. Inevitably, you will have to make minor if not major changes, ranging from the need to pursue an unexpected lead (potentially minor) to the need to identify a new 'case' for study (potentially major)" (Yin 2013, 74). If this doesn't sound like ethnographic research, I am not sure what does!
• Have a firm grasp on the issues being studied - Yin's argument here is to keep one's research question or purpose in mind throughout the research, and attend to how the data collected might shape or demand a shift in the direction of the research.
• Avoid biases - Yin urges researchers to be open to what the data shows, rather than trying to force the data to support a preconceived hypothesis. Again this echoes how anthropologists often pose exploratory how and why questions in our research.
• Conduct research ethically - Here, Yin even cites the AAA's Code of Ethics among other disciplinary and processional ethical codes.

In many ways, how anthropologists approach ethnographic research seem to mirror how Yin frames the case study approach. Yet, Yin frames ethnography as a single method that can be incorporated into case-study research.

A good place to start unpacking the placement of ethnography in his toolkit for case study research is to reflect on how ethnography is understood outside of anthropology.

Although more and more people are being hired in alt-ac careers as professional ethnographers, there is still a misunderstanding or a "watering-down" of ethnography in industry and other professional spheres. What anthropologists are apt of see as "ethnography-lite" is a relatively narrow understanding of what ethnography is, and seems to reflect how this research approach has been popularly adopted by non-anthropologists, for instance in education, nursing, and business. As Marc LeFleur (VP Insights and Co-Head Health at Idea Couture) underscores "something has been lost in this widespread adoption of ethnography outside of academia. Ethnography is on its way to now just becoming another method, simply shorthand for hanging out with people for longer than a focus group would take, another hammer in the market researcher’s toolkit."

The Case for Ethnographers...

Recognizing the overlap and shared strengths of ethnography with case study research presents an interesting opportunity for anthropologists, especially those of us looking to engage a non-academic audience. Not knowing the language of Case Study Research means that anthropologists are missing out on important opportunities to bring our holistic, rigorous, and thickly descriptive approach into social research in the public sphere.

Like ethnography, case studies are used to answer how and why type questions. We can see from Yin's text that the sources of data used for case studies are the same as those any ethnographer would consider. Similarly, the skills and approach to research Yin outlines for case study research sound a lot like my second-year lecture on ethnographic methods.

What makes case study research different from ethnography?

Depending on the type of case study undertaken, there really might not be much difference between this form of research and ethnography. In my work with OCWI, I found that my research approach as a trained ethnographer fit rather seamlessly with the goals and structure sought for this report ― with the exception of framing the research question, anchoring my analysis, and writing for a non-specialist audience.

Research Questions

Importantly, case study research questions may be preset by the organization or funder rather than by the researcher themselves.

In my work with OCWI, I was hired to develop a research report on a single, predefined case that would speak to their mandate regarding workforce innovation. This meant that during research, I had to keep the priorities and interests of my employer (and case program stakeholders) in mind. A challenge here was balancing how to stay on task, while attending to interesting threads that were less pertinent but nonetheless important to understanding the case.

For instance, in my research of the Youth Empowering Parents program, I was interested in following up on the connections and outcomes surrounding voluntarism, community belonging, and the role of the YEP program in immigrant integration. However, with OCWI's key interests around employability, it was important to consider these research threads in relation to the task at hand. YEP's interest in framing their program as a youth empowering initiative and voluntarism opportunity for low-income youth encouraged me to trace connections between youth voluntarism, community/ civic engagement, and OCWI's key interests in employability. Questions around identity and community belonging -- although fascinating -- were less important to pursue in the context of this research.

Anchoring the analysis

While my background in social theory certainly helped me to analyse my data, this report was not to make theory explicit. When I began writing my first draft, I felt a little adrift in terms of how to speak to OCWI's understanding of employability and employment outcomes. This industry-specific language was not something which which I was familiar and I felt a bit out of my depth.

By recognizing my OCWI supervisor as a valuable informant in this field, I approached her for guidance. She steered me to key documents and policies from the Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development (which is funding these case studies). These documents helped to give me an anchor point for considering the Program Evaluation dimension of the intended final report. Grounding my report in this literature was important for helping produce a case study that would speak to our intended audience(s).

Writing for a non-specialist audience

One of the reasons that I was hired by OCWI to develop this case study, was because my supervisor recognized the value and richness of ethnography and wanted to bring this dimension into our report. The format of my report was set by the template developed by OCWI, covering context, history, implementation, and “lessons learned.” Being able to frame the lessons learned, or impact, of the YEP program in people's everyday lives was clearly well-suited to an ethnographic approach.

While case studies might be directed at academic readers, they are also likely to be of interest or use to non-specialists like community stakeholders, policy makers, practitioners, and funders connected to the case you are studying (Yin 2013, 180). In my case study for OCWI, it was clear from the outset that the report should be accessible, not overtly theoretical, but nonetheless based on rigorous empirical evidence and analysis. Our anticipated audience would be community organizers across Ontario (and potentially beyond) interested in implementing similar workforce innovations in their own communities.

In my case, I worked in close contact with both my supervising colleague at OCWI and my key contact at YEP throughout the writing phase. In many ways, this experience reflected the professional relationships that academic anthropologists have with colleagues/ supervisors/ reviewers and their research participants, incorporating and addressing constructive criticism and concerns for representation from both parties. Sharing my early drafts with both partners helped to ensure that my report met the needs of both my employer's mandate, and the needs of our community partner who would use this report to help grow their program in different communities and gain the support of additional funders.


The experience of learning about and doing "case study research" has raised some important questions for me about the intersections of this approach with ethnography -- some of which I have tried to answer here. Next Monday, we'll continue this series by thinking about some more of the parallels between this form of research common in alt-ac spheres and ethnography through the concept of "grey literature." Stay tuned!

If you have experience with case study research as an anthropologist, please let us know! You can tweet us @anthrolens or email us anthrolens@gmail.com.

Quick links and further reading:

• Robert K. Yin's text Case Study Research: Design and Methods (5th edition)
• USC's Research Guide: Writing a Case Study
• Marc LeFleur on Reclaiming Ethnography (2017, LinkedIn)
• Ethnography, Case-Study Research, and Program Evaluation (Oh my!) (anthro everywhere! 8 January 2018)
• For all posts in this series, check our Special Series: Ethnography & ... page.

A look back at anthropology everywhere in 2017!

As 2017 comes rapidly to a close, here's our annual round-up of some of our favourite posts and content published this year.

Thanks to everyone who has read our over 90 new posts, and checked out our growing list of dedicated pages on things like Advice for Grad Students, our expanding list of links to how people are Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university, and our newly renamed Special Series: Ethnography & ... which now features reflections and insights from blogger Jennifer Long's new pedagogical research in post-secondary education.

Looking back, here are 10 of our own favourite posts from 2017 loosely organized around some key themes...

On ethnography and fieldwork:

• Teaching ethnography (26 January 2017)
• Fieldwork: preparing for the good, bad, and the ugly (16 March 2017)
• Promoting publications behind paywalls... or anthro everywhere! in Anthropologica (15 May 2017)

Engaging anthropology through social media:

• Blogging for research (9 January 2017)
• Why We Post: Anthropologists take on Social Media (26 June 2017)
• Anthropology Podcasting (24 August 2017)
• Fake News: Questions and Resources for Back to Class and All Year Round (7 September 2017)

And to round it out, some of our favourite topical posts from 2017:

• Special Friday Edition: The Dutch Election, Domino Effects and Wilders' Patriotic Spring (17 March 2017)
• What's in a Word? The Importance of Recognizing the Etymology of Words (27 March 2017)
• #Canada150, Indigenous nations 13,000... (3 July 2017)

Thanks for reading this year! We'll be back in 2018 with more resources, more research, and more anthropology everywhere!

What were your favourite posts from 2017? Tweet us @anthrolens

Got ideas for posts you'd like to see (or see more of) in 2018? Send us an email anthrolens@gmail.com

Did I plagiarize? A flow chart

For teachers and students alike, early November is the heart of the mid-term assignment swamp. As we wade through various assignments, questions of how to maintain academic integrity in one's work are bound to arise.

Well, since I am also in the middle of that swamp, here's a quick, kind of fun infographic to share from The Visual Communication Guy's blog:

Did I Plagiarize? Infographic Flow Chart from The Visual Communication Guy

Click on the photo's caption to follow the link to the original post (and zoom-able graphic).

Good luck getting through the mid-term marking! See you on the other side...

Writing better Conference Abstracts and crafting better Posters

We originally planned to write this post for grad students, but really, couldn't we all benefit fit from learning a bit more about how to write a great conference abstract or an eye-catching poster?

Here are a couple of interesting resources for helping you do just that.

From the LSE Impact Blog, you might like to read Your essential ‘how-to’ guide to writing good abstracts and their follow-up post How to write a killer conference abstract: The first step towards an engaging presentation. These posts contain some useful tips for grad students applying to a conference for the first time. Veteran conference-goers may also benefit from reviewing these suggestions, and considering how conference abstracts are different from article abstracts.

Conference posters are often less common among social anthropologists than paper presentations. As a visual medium, posters present unique challenges for researchers whose work is based in narrative. However, we're not the only discipline who struggles with how best to represent our findings in this format. Luckily, there are many resources available to help you craft an informative and eye-catching poster:

• 4 Design Tips, For Awesome Research Posters (22 October 2012, AAA Blog)
• Better Posters: A resource for improving poster presentations
• How to Create a Research Poster: Poster Basics (NYU Libraries)
• Creating Anthropology Conference Posters: A Guide for Beginners (Jason E. Miller and John K. Trainor)

We've also taken the opportunity to update our page on Advice for Grad Students | Writing Tips with this information on conferencing. If you're getting ready to head to a conference, you might also want to check out our collected tips on networking on our Advice for Grad Students | Professional Development Strategies page.

Fake News: Questions and Resources for Back to Class and All Year Round

Ah, fake news.  As a phenomenon, its truthiness is both fascinating (from an epistemological perspective, at least) and highly troubling (from the perspective of anyone who cares about information literacy, quality research, social justice, ...). Many anthropologists and others have spent a lot of time not only countering fake news messages -- the recently infamous Google Memo is a good example -- but trying to understand how and why fake news works. For instance, take Scientific American's Anthropology in Practice articles on "Understanding The Social Capital of Fake News" (28 November 2016) and "Three Historical Examples of "Fake News"" (1 December 2016).

Discerning valid arguments based on evidence from what might be called "fake news" has always been an important part of a university education. Yet, the challenges we face in how we teach this kind of critical thinking seem to be becoming ever more difficult in the current climate and through the proliferation of messages in our contemporary media.


Luckily, hardworking librarians exist to help uphold information literacy teaching and learning, like those at the Toronto Public Library. Toronto librarians have put together an accessible page on How to Spot Fake News that poses important questions to consider (and why to consider them) when assessing the validity of a message, article, post, or news site, as well as links to additional resources. While some of these additional resources are available only to TPL patrons, many more are accessible to anyone, such as this list of Research Guides:

• How Do I Spot Fake News? (University of Toronto Libraries) 
• Fake News: Resources (Indiana University East) 
• Fake News, Misinformation, and Propaganda (Harvard University) 
• Fighting Fake News: Start (Gustavus Adolphus College) 
• Evaluating Information - Applying the CRAAP Test (PDF) (Meriam Library) 
• How to Identify Fake News in 10 Steps (ProQuest)
• Updated 14 January 2018: The BBC has another 10 point checklist Fake news: Universities offer tips on how to spot it
• Updated 14 January 2018: And the TLDR version... check out this informative, accessible video from Quartz featuring journalist Damaso Reyes (3:05 minutes).

Now that you are armed with these great resources and questions, happy back to class!

Quick Links and further reading:

• What is ‘Fake News’? (Sociological Imagination, 2017)
• "Understanding The Social Capital of Fake News" and "Three Historical Examples of "Fake News"" (Scientific American's Anthropology in Practice, 2016).
• Anthropologists need to address the Google memo on its merits. Again. (Anthrodendum, 2017)
• How to Spot Fake News (Toronto Public Library)
• anthro everywhere!'s page on Reading Lists, Syllabi, & Teaching Resources including a link to the Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data Syllabus

Updated 14 January 2018

Anthropologists Visualizing Data: Packaging Anthropological Knowledge Part Three

In line with the post from earlier this week, Anthro Everywhere! is revisiting the topic of visualizing data in accessible (i.e. easily consumable) ways.

What do I mean about easily consumable data visualization? Take for example, a non-anthropological sample from the Cornell Note-taking System from Cornell University's Learning Strategies Center about the Cornell Note-taking System, a useful tool for all undergraduate students seen below (for a clearer copy, click on the link above or below in quick links):

Cornell Note-taking System by Cornell University's Learning Strategies Center

Despite this interesting method, the below revision by Life Hacker (from 2006!) is arguably more accessible:

Life Hacker's Version of Cornell's Note-taking System

The question for today's post is: What kinds of accessible and memorable data visualization have anthropologists created? 

There are likely many examples, one of which stuck in my mind was Grant Otsuki's portrayal of the number of dissertations produced by institutions. 

According to Otsuki, the size of the circles is proportional to the number of dissertations in cultural anthropology produced by that institution since 1900. If a user his website, they can hold their mouse pointer over the circle to get the full name of the institution, and the number of dissertations produced:

Otsuki's Portrayal of the Number of Dissertations produced by Institution

Otsuki's larger work focuses on the question “What does it mean to be human in contemporary technological societies?” This example of dissertations per university is one example of anthropological visualizations of their data.

But let's put the question to you: What other memorable and accessible visualizations have you seen by anthropologists? Let us know via email (anthrolens@gmail.com) or tweet us @anthrolens.

Quick Links:

• Cornell Note Taking System, Cornell University Learning Strategies Centre
• gjotsuki.net/visualizations.html, Grant Otsuki
• Geek to Live: Take study-worthy lecture notes, Gina Trapani on Life Hacker (Sept 22 2006)
• The Packaging Anthropological Knowledge Part Two, Anthro Everywhere! (July 31 2017)
• The Packaging of Anthropological Knowledge and Its Merits According to Market Research Experts. Anthro Everywhere! (June 29 2017)

The Packaging Anthropological Knowledge Part Two

As an anthropologist teaching technical communications, I often reflect on the merits of active, concise, and accessible communication styles that I didn't learn while studying my undergraduate or graduate degrees.

If I were to summarize how I would change my anthropological writing on account of teaching technical writing, I would advocate for the following three rules:

1. Write in an active voice. Always. 
2. Connect all the dots. Give readers a sense for what they're going to read, write it, then summarize it for them. It's not a mystery novel. Descriptive prose has a place of course (C. Geertz need not roll over in his grave) - perhaps in ethnographic vignettes or when describing initial contexts or landscapes.
3. Write with information/knowledge dissemination in mind. Accessible writing will make your ideas spread further.

Academia Obscura recently (Jul 28 2017) posted about a resource for academics, Doodling for Academics by Julie Schumacher. The publisher's website writes that the resources is a bitingly funny distraction designed to help you survive life in higher education without losing your mind. Sardonic yet shrewdly insightful, Doodling for Academics offers the perfect cognitive relief for the thousands of faculty and grad students whose mentors and loved ones failed to steer them toward more reasonable or lucrative field.

Below are two sample doodles from the book. You can access a sampler of the book here.

Doodle from Julie Schumacher via Academia Obscura

Doodle from Julie Schumacher via Academia Obscura

While this book is supposed to be a fun mental release from the hierarchies and pseudo-political power plays, the peculiar colleagues, the over-parented students, the stacks of essays that need to be graded ASAP - I also see these doodles as examples of repackaging knowledge in new and accessible ways. 

While these doodles may be the starting point for larger discussions (as the medium would limit the capacity to elaborate on complex ideas), I can think of a place for such doodles in ethnographic texts perhaps as a means to personalize readers' experiences of the work as a colouring book (the original intention of Schumacher's book). 

One could also use such doodles and the act of colouring as a methodology. For example, I'm reminded of Diane Farmer, Jeanette Cepin, and Gabrielle Breton-Carbonneau's article in the Journal of Social Science Education which can be found here Students’ Pathways Across Local, National and Supra-National Borders: Representations of a Globalized World in a Francophone Minority School in Ontario, Canada

Any time that I see Anthropologists and Scientists try to disseminate their work in new and creative ways, I can see its role as publicly engaged intellectuals.

Quick Links:

• Students’ Pathways Across Local, National and Supra-National Borders: Representations of a Globalized World in a Francophone Minority School in Ontario, Canada Diane Farmer, Jeanette Cepin, and Gabrielle Breton-Carbonneau (3-2015 JSSE)
• Doodling for Academics: A colouring and activity book. Julie Schumacher (2017)
• Doodling for Academics - A sampler. Julie Schumacher (2017)
• Doodling for Academics. Academia Obscura (July 28, 2017)
• The Packaging of Anthropological Knowledge and Its Merits According to Market Research Experts. Anthro Everywhere! (June 29 2017)

Anthropology Blogs for the Affluent Tech-Thusiast?

Scientific American identifies its 9 million strong readership as educated and affluent adults. The magazine is #1 when reaching “tech-thusiasts" who they define as individuals who own and use new technology and who are apt to buying the latest devices. Why is this important?

This digital magazine has had a long running a series (since 2011) called Anthropology in Practice: Exploring the human condition. The main contributor is Krystal D'Costa who is an anthropologist living in New York City. Much like us here at anthroeverywhere!, D'Costa's posts explore everyday life from the anthropological perspective.

The following list demonstrates the range of topics:

• A four part series on Rice & Beans (May 11 2015) - See the first post on How does culture become generic? 
• Why Does Everything Look the Same? (July 15 2015)
• Shared Sanitation: Bathroom Access and Facilities Around the World (May 11 2016)
• Understanding The Social Capital of Fake News (November 28 2017)
• A Nation Divided by Social Media (January 31 2017)
• The Rising Trend of Pets at Work (May 11 2017)

These interesting reads would be useful discussion starters for a second year anthropology classrooms or as a quick link share for friends, parents or managers who are trying to answer: well, what can anthropology do?

Quick Links: 

• Anthropology in Practice: Exploring the human condition Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American 
• Why We Post: Anthropologists take on Social Media Anthro Everywhere! (June 26 2017)
• Teaching Resource: Social Inequality and Teaching in the Academy Anthro Everywhere! (May 25 2017)
• Teaching Ethnography Anthro Everywhere! (January 25 2017)

Promoting publications behind paywalls... or anthro everywhere! in Anthropologica

Jennifer and Rhiannon at CASCA-IUAES
with Vol. 59, Issue 1 of Anthropologica (May 2017)

What a nice surprise to arrive at the CASCA-IUAES intercongress last week and see our new journal article "Agency and Agendas: Revisiting the role of the Researcher and the Researched in Ethnographic Research" published in the most recent issue of Anthropologica! This article was co-authored by the authors of anthro everywhere! (Rhiannon Mosher and Jennifer Long) as well as Elisabeth Le and Lauren Harding.

This is also an opportune moment to reflect on how we can best communicate about our new article through social media. During CASCA the publisher (University of Toronto Press) had made this latest issue open access, but now that the conference has ended, our article is once again behind a paywall. So, as Aidnography suggests in Don’t post direct links to your new journal article! (17 April 2017), here's a brief description of our latest publication. If you have access to Anthropologica as a CASCA member, or through your institution, we hope that you download and read the full text.

"Agency and Agendas"

"Agency and Agendas" came out of the discussions we had as members of a panel during CASCA 2015 with the late Pierre Maranda (1930-2015) on the researcher as starting point for ethnographic research. Growing out of that early discussion, this article focused in on how ethnographic research is an essentially collaborative project between the researcher and the researched, all of whom exert agency in how they choose to engage with the ethnographic project (or not), and in the service of their own agendas -- which may align or differ from those identified by the researcher in their project. This article doesn't focus on explicitly collaborative research approaches -- like PAR or activist approaches -- but thinks about how ethnographic knowledge is created more generally. In thinking through the diversity of moments that comprise what we come to know through this approach to social research, we find Anna Tsing's notion of "friction" useful, as it "engages not only the ‘‘awkward zone of encounter’’ but also the potentially generative results of diverse, even divergent, agendas and agencies coming together" (Mosher et al. 2017:154). As we write,

Tsing’s friction refers not to conflict or poor relations among the researcher or researched. Instead, friction refers to the idea that our interlocutors are agentive individuals who wilfully take part in, and influence, our research. How our interlocutors participate (or refuse to participate) deeply affects our work as ethnographers (Mosher et al. 2017:146).

In this article, we wanted to try to move beyond simply discussing reflexivity and positionality, and instead consider how the people who participate in our research co-create what we consider 'the field' -- how this interaction deeply "enables, shapes, redirects, and limits the kinds of research we may ultimately produce." Through drawing on our own research experiences, we argue that what we come to know through ethnography "is in no small part due to the agency and agendas of those we recruit as participants in our studies" (Mosher et al. 2017:147). As authors, we tackle these questions and hope to open up this discussion through addressing considerations of:

• how our potential participants shape and direct our access to data. Our interactions with the people, places, and issues that we seek to understand are deeply entangled in the iterative process of ethnography.
• what might be called the "observed" effect on our research. In what ways are we and our research agendas/ approaches shaped by becoming an object of scrutiny among our research community/ participants/ informants? 
• the adaptation of ethnographic methods to non-academic research contexts. With the growing interest in ethnographic methods in industry, how can anthropologists pursue "thick" ethnographic relationships and insights in the context of rapid, industry research timelines (including where our research contacts have been pre-arranged by a third party)?
• the afterlives of research. How do the reputations of past researchers among the communities we study impact or frame the kind of research we do in the present? How might our own research findings become incorporated into yet unimagined future projects and agendas, including among our former research communities?

Quick links:

• "Agency and Agendas: Revisiting the role of the Researcher and the Researched in Ethnographic Research" Anthropologica (pay-walled article)
• Aidnography's Don’t post direct links to your new journal article! (17 April 2017)
• A New Home for Ethnography: The Use and Legacy of Ethnography by Anthropologists and Non-Anthropologists (anthro everywhere! 9 June 2016)

Media, language, and social relationships

In teaching anthropology, I always find students to be exceptionally interested on the days that we talk about media. Many of my students consider social media to be an important part of their lives and social interactions, from how they connect to others to how they spend their leisure time. And, in many ways this engagement has actually changed the ways through which students interact with us, as well as the language and forms of address we see in email communications.

To many of us who really care about writing well (and try to teach this skill and sensibility), these shifts are occasionally taken as doomsday signals of the downfall of the English language, or even the future of society in general (when we're being melodamatic, anyway). Yet, to take an anthropological approach, it's interesting to think about how these different forms of media actually mediate social relationships... including between ourselves and our students.

I often like to show the first 12 minutes or so or Michael Wesch's lecture "An anthropological introduction to YouTube" to students when we first discuss media. Wesch really brings home this idea that media is more than just content, and that media mediate social relationships.

So, really, it shouldn't be surprising that engagements through new forms of media have lead to interesting (if annoying) cultural changes in language use and meaning. An interesting example of this is observable in this piece from Newsweek: "What it means when you end your emails with a period." Here, David Crystal opens by remarking how "Regular emailers will have encountered the new styles, and may use all of them. The omission of punctuation marks, avoidance of capitalization, and the use of nonstandard spelling is commonplace." Yet, this kind of language use is also part of our learned cultural context:

These styles are characteristic of informal e-communication. The more formal the interaction, the less they are likely to occur, and the more they will be construed as inappropriate. So it's important for youngsters experimenting with internet styles to realize that breaking the conventions of the standard language is dangerous in certain settings.

Another interesting example of shifting meanings -- this time within and across social media platforms -- comes from this The Sociological Imagination piece, "“Liking” it on Facebook." Javier de Rivera explores the sensibility and standardization of feeling connected to the "like" function on platforms like FaceBook and Instagram. Consider the following statement about the shifting and standardizing meanings associated with functions such as the "like" or "fav" across these different platforms:

The evolution of Twitter seems to be going in the same direction, by experimenting with the Favs and changing them to Likes, establishing the trend – that started several years ago – for using this feature to show appreciation rather than for archival purposes. Here, overlapping is not possible, by choosing Hearts as a mean of social interaction we are deploying its value as an archival resource: our list of bookmarks would be flooded with the less memorable tweets we chose to mark as an expression of appreciation.

How might you bring these examples into your classroom discussions of cultural change, community, meaning, and language?

Quick links and further reading:

• Michael Wesch's (2008) An anthropological introduction to YouTube [55.30 minutes]
• What it means when you end your emails with a period (4 February 2017, Newsweek)
• “Liking” it on Facebook (21 December 2015, The Sociological Imagination)
• More posts from anthro everywhere! on language and cultural change:
• The mutability of language (LOL!) (9 March 2016)
• How does language shape our worldview? (17 October 2016)
• A historical view of a long heated debate: what could be more menacing than the singular "they"? (8 September 2016)
• Add it to the dictionary! Changing language, changing culture (12 December 2016) 
• What's in a Word? The Importance of Recognizing the Etymology of Words (27 March 2017)

Book Report Entry #2: Beyond Informants

In continuation from our coverage of Luis A. Vivianco's Field Notes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology, he provides a practical appraisal of fieldwork in his second chapter.

In one of his Fieldwork Tips, Vivianco describes the terminology used to identify the people who anthropologists conduct research with. He reminds us that fieldworkers actively select and synthesize with those individuals what actual details will become data, in a process that Fabian recognized was neither objective or subjective but intersubjective, which refers to the joint creation of comprehension and meaning between a fieldworker and the subjects of his or her research.

Below is a list of terms that Vivianco uses to point to the relationship between the researcher and participant:

1. Interlocutor - speaks to an ongoing conversation between an ethnographer and the individuals involved with their research 
2. Collaborator - highlights an attempt to find equity between participant and researcher
3. Consultants - evokes a feeling of seeking out and working with participants as 'experts'
4. Informant - potential negative associations on account of their use in criminal and legalistic connotation (e.g. police informant)

It's important to realize the position of anthropologists (historically and currently) in relation to their participants - I would argue that this is unique to anthropology within the social science disciplines.

In 2015, Kristina from the cool Anthropology, or so we seem to think blog published a post about the differences between Anthropology and Sociology. In this post, she describes the similarities between anthropological and sociological studies, which is no small feat. Through comparison, the author is forced to frame these disciplines as binary opposites in order to account for their historical impressions; yet, she teases out the important and growing cross-over work by researchers in each of these fields.

An example of this teasing out process is found in understanding the location of a typical field site, which she writes as: Both Anthropology and Sociology have transformed over the last 100 years or so, but their roots are still present in the disciplines today. Sociological studies are most often based in Western or industrialized societies, while anthropological studies have more traditionally been based in non-Western societies. While many, many anthropologists work in Western societies and communities now, this early difference is still significant. 

Kristina doesn't write about the position of researcher in relation to the participant in her post; however, one might argue that anthropologists typically prioritize the voices of their research participants in the write up, and analysis, of their work as is pointed out by Vivianco in his fieldwork tip titled Beyond "Informants"? While there are certainly sociologists who understand their research relationships in the same way, this distinction could be identified as something unique to our field.

Quick links and further reading:

•  cool Anthropology, or so we seem to think blog
• Vivianco's text Fieldnotes: A guided journal for doing anthropology
• anthro everywhere's: 
• Google Translate from Photos (March 09, 2017)
• Book Report Entry #1: Field notes: A Guided Journal for Doing Anthropology (February 20, 2017)

Imaginative Ethnography Syllabi (CIE)

The Centre for Imaginative Ethnography has gathered links to a number of syllabi that "attend to some combination of performance, theatre, visual media, writing and ethnography."

This treasure trove includes inspiration from courses such as:

• GIRL STORIES: RACE, POLITICS, AND PEDAGOGY, Melissa Harris-Parry and Dani Parker
• ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE SENSES, Zulfikar Hirji and Natasha Myers, Department of Anthropology, York University
• and ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM: HISTORY AND THEORY OF ETHNOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION ON FILM AND VIDEO, Deborah Matzner, Department of Anthropology, Wellesley College

You might also wish to have a look CIE's page on "Pedagogical Experiments" or our page on Reading Lists & Syllabi Resources.

Teaching ethnography

The anthro everywhere! authors recently came across an intriguing article written for the online magazine Quillette entitled "Tyranny of the Ethnography: How Lived Experience Corrupts the Social Sciences." This piece, written by Toni Airaksinen, an undergraduate student at Barnard College, argues that teaching ethnography is misleading students, and even dangerously so. Citing her experiences of most social science classes (though all appear to be in sociology), where professors are keen to assign recent works such as Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman, or Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D Vance, Airaksinen writes that:

Ethnographies — books based on “lived experience” — are one of the most powerful types of books professors can assign. Yet, most of these books give students an extremely distorted understanding of what life is like for people living at the lowest rungs of society. Academia’s multicultural oppression fetish, which permeates the social sciences, ensures assigned books will invariably revolve around at least one aspect of the Holy Trinity of Oppression: race, class or gender.

The complicated and nuanced issues that face people of color, women, and the poor do exist in reality, of course. But ethnographies are not reality. Instead, they are a collection of the most sensational anecdotes of a novel culture deliberately curated to convey the most shock value.

As anthropologists, our first instinct is to dismiss this statement as part of a clear misunderstanding of what ethnography is and is intended to convey to the reader. Yet, as anthropologists, we also have to respect the fact that these condemnations are (ironically) based on Airaksinen's own lived experience and observations as a student. For her, the real problem with ethnography is that "books like these give students the sense that they “understand” phenomena they’ve never had personal experience with."

As university instructors with backgrounds in anthropology, we can't help but read Airaksinen's complaint as a teachable moment -- for instructors teaching ethnography in their classrooms. If this is what students like Airaksinen are taking away from the ethnographies that we teach, where are we failing them, and how can we teach ethnography better?

While we don't have all of the answers, here is a short list of blog posts and online resources shared by anthropologists on how they approach teaching ethnography as text and method in the classroom.

On encouraging critical engagement with ethnographic texts in the classroom:

• Julia Kowalski's outline for creating "Ethnography Labs: Unpacking Ethnographic Narrative" offers a useful assignment structure for helping students "recognize ethnography as a rigorous, empirical, and argumentative method by learning to identify where arguments are in ethnographic texts and to help them see the distinctions between argument and evidence." 
• Carole McGranahan's post offers her experience of teaching and tracking "What Makes Something Ethnographic?" (Savage Minds, 2012) in her classroom.

These posts offer instructive reflections and suggestions for how to teach ethnography as a method:

• Carole McGranahan's "What is Ethnography? Teaching Ethnographic Sensibilities without Fieldwork" (2014, Teaching Anthropology) 
• Lindsay A. Bell's "Teaching Culture and Methods to Novice/Non-Anthropologists" and "Five Simple Steps for Helping Students Write Ethnographic Papers" (2013, Teaching Culture) is useful for teaching students to work through their own ethnographic projects.

For instructors/ writers reflecting on ethnography as a form of writing, these discussions may be useful:

• Raul Pacheco-Vega's "On having ethnographic sensibility" (2016, personal website of Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD)
• Dhruv Sharma's "Everybody’s an Ethnographer!" (2016, Ethnography Matters)
• Robert Potts' "What’s the matter with Ethnography?" (2016, Ethnography Matters)
• Savage Minds' series: "Anthropologists Writing: The Fall 2015 Writers’ Workshop Essay Series" (2015)

If you have resource suggestions for teaching ethnography in the classroom (guiding students through critically reading ethnographic texts, as a methodology, or otherwise) we'd love to read them! Contact us via email or Twitter @anthrolens.

What does knitting sweaters for kittens or filming fetish porn in your basement have in common? An Activity for second semester student introductions

What are you we doing in the classroom besides trying to make one another think about things? Or think about things in a new way or create new ways of thinking? As teachers in the classroom, we'd like this 'thinking' thing to happen for all 3 hours per week that we have students but breaking through barriers of distraction, boredom, and perhaps hunger is sometimes really, really difficult to do.

That's why I like pieces like Mark Manson's 7 Strange Questions that Help You Find your Life Purpose. Perhaps the subject matter doesn't appeal to you but at the very least, his no bullshit-cut-to-the-chase writing style does appeal to me and I'm sure, many of my students. 

As an instructor teaching the second semester of what is essentially a full-year course, I'm not looking for ways in which my students can be introduced to one another for the first time. Instead, I want them to discover more and go deeper. So for a next-level introductory activity to the group work that I've assigned this semester, I'm going to have them answer Manson's insightful questions that I've paraphrased below as a way to get to know one another better (and perhaps again):

1. What struggle or sacrifice are you willing to put up with?

2. What is true about yourself today that would make your 8-year-old-self cry?

3. What makes you forget to eat and poop, i.e. what kind of activities enthrall you and what are the cognitive principles behind them?

4. What unconventional and unique thing are you avoiding right now due to its potential embarrassment?

5. How are you going to save the world?

6. If you were absolutely forced to leave the house everyday, all day, where would you go?

7. If you were going to die in one year from today, what would you do and how would you like to be remembered? 

Getting those wheels turning in the classroom can open up avenues to one's content, to the larger life questions/purposes of a discipline), among many others. 

Manson began this post with a discussion about the difficulty in defining one's life purpose (whether knitting for kittens or filming in one's basement...); He argues that this question is daunting and almost impossible to answer. Instead, asking these questions of oneself and others might help students reflect on where they are and where they want to be - importantly, in a no-bullshit-cut-to-the-chase kind of way.

Blogging for research

There are many reasons why anthropologists and other social scientists choose to blog. For instance, anthro everywhere! began as a way to share resources with instructors, students, and others who were interested in an anthropological perspective. Blogging is also an interesting tool to use during research and for sharing research results, as sociologist Mark Carrigan writes in a post from The Sociological Imagination: 7 ways to use a blog as a research journal.

Carrigan argues that writing a blog can be useful for:

1. Recording particularly powerful extracts of texts to which I might wish to refer later
2. Capturing ideas and insights which occur, usually when engaging with the ideas of others
3. Brainstorming sessions in response to particular ideas or around particular themes
4. Longer form reflections on particular topics
5. Sharing ‘homeless’ bits of academic work that have been cut from papers
6. Developing conference presentations
7. Planning forthcoming writing projects

As the authors of anthro everywhere! can attest from writing their own research blogs while in the field, you might also use blogging to:

• give potential participants a point of reference about your research
• recruit participants to your study
• keep in the habit of writing and work through some of the themes that you see emerging from your research as it unfolds
• disseminate your research in an open-access format (as was the case for a project Jennifer worked on during her post-doc: Cultural Diversity and the Workplace)
• build your digital identity as a researcher (see also: Advice for Grad Students)

Ethno everywhere! Workshop

The American Anthropology Association's Annual Meeting hosted a workshop on November 16th about Ethnographic Writing. In this workshop, Ruth Behar from the University of Michigan and Marcia Ochoa Univ of California Santa Cruz discussed their tips and tricks for crafting an ethnographic scene, writing this form of data into one's work, and solving such problems as how to harmonize the voices of your interlocuters and weave theory into these stories.

One very useful outcome (as there were many) of this workshop was a list of ethnographies used to teach others (and learn more) about the various possibilities for ethnographic writing. Below is a(n incomplete) list of ethnographies and suggestions as to their unique approach to this writing genre.

• Ruth Benedict's (1936) Patterns of Culture  –  Classic ethnographic text that weaves in poetic prose (written as under the pseudonym Anne Singleton)
• Zora Neale Hurston's (1935) Mules and Men  – Uses conversational style writing to describe the context, setting and relationship with her interlocuters.
• James Agee's (1941) Let Us Now Praise Famous Men –  A literary journalist who comes across as ethnographic in the amount of detail he gave
• Claude Levi-Strauss' (1961) Tristes Tropiques ­– Levi-Strauss' use of irony
• John Langston Gwaltney's (1980) Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America – Black American anthropologist (who was also blind) introduced each person he met with as an epigraph to introduce a chapter or scene
• Kevin Dwyer's (1982) Moroccan Dialogues: Anthropology in Question – includes dialogue (like Zora Neale Hurston) in the text
• Svetlana Alexievich's (1997) Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster – the manner in which she formats her ethnographies keeps the poetics of her interlocutors. 
• Renato Rosaldo's (2013) The Day of Shelly’s Death: The poetry and ethnography of grief  – "Anthro-poetry"